Dakota 5-O

Well. Josh W and Khamail, and Rox and I took of for a 3 day weekend in South Dakota. Let me just say that TimE has been keepin a secret. There's some sweet singletrack up in the Black Hills. Perfect soil, tacky, not too much altitude, and a healthy number of rocks thrown in to weed out the posers. It was raining Saturday morning in Mitchell SD, and it looked like Spearfish received a good amount as well. So we had our fingers crossed that we had left our previous luck in Omaha. We woke up Sunday morning, race day, to a cool 40 degrees, and some warm pancakes with peanut butter for protein. By race time (7:45am) I don't think the temp had gotten above 55, so it was tough to get warmed up. And you didn't want to start with too much clothing b/c you'd be carrying it for 50 miles. Didn't know much about the start, except that it was on gravel for awhile, and in enduro fashion I was sure it would pitch upward quite a bit. Gotta weed out the crowd, ya know. And pitch upward it sure did. About 3 miles on gravel and then it was nearly all singletrack for the next 40+ miles. Lots of shadows, lots of foliage, and the singletrack was true singletrack, only about 12-18" wide. Benched well, flowed well. Vary apparent that most of this is trail built by mountain bikers, for mountain bikers. Temps eventually warmed up to high 60's by the end of the race-- Sweet!

Saw Carp, Jose, and Jay Chesterman at the start, then saw Jose on a big climb after he took a wrong turn somewhere. Carp pulled off the win in the SS category, he's a monster. Jose would have had a better finish if he had not taken a 4 mi detour off course (yes, the course could've been marked much better.) Josh fell victim to poor course marking as well. I ended up waiting at a few corners for other riders to make sure I was choosing the right route. Funny to pass some locals on a climb then wait for em at a turn, but I did not want to go off course! Jay Chesterman from Sioux City, and director of this years Ponca event, pulled off a second place finish.